GUNS AND ROSES
Guns and roses
President Trump’s much-hailed peace deal in Gaza is already foundering, even as efforts in another global hotspot have not borne fruit. Amit Agnihotri, reports
US president Donald Trump may have been able to broker a much-awaited Gaza peace deal but, as recent developments show, ensuring long-term calm between old rivals Israel and Hamas in volatile West Asia will remain a huge challenge for the White House.
The Gaza peace plan introduced a tentative ceasefire in one of the world’s major hotspots, where this conflict has been raging since 2023.
Although the Palestine-Israel rivalry is decades old, this latest phase of the Gaza conflict started on October 7, 2023 when Israel launched a military campaign in response to an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which killed 1,200 people. Another 251 others were taken as hostages. Since then, around 68,280 people have been killed in the Israeli attacks on Gaza, provoking some countries to term it a genocide.
Trump’s Gaza peace plan, signed in the presence of key stakeholders at a special summit in Egypt in October, was hailed across the world. But continuing ceasefire violations, delays in the return of hostages and blocking of humanitarian aid are impacting its progress.
The deal presents a detailed roadmap for both Hamas and Israel to maintain the ceasefire and ultimately end the war. But mutual distrust and hostility between the two sides have created a tinder box situation in Gaza.The deal has repeatedly come under threat as Israel accused Hamas of stalling on handing over dead hostages, and of attacking its soldiers. Doubts over interpretation of the Yellow Line, the boundary that will separate Palestinian settlements from Israel, have also surfaced.
A recent major flare-up killed two Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza, forcing the military to carry out dozens of strikes in which 45 Palestinians reportedly perished.
Fearing the violence could rock the truce, a worried Trump quickly dispatched Secretary of State Marco Rubio and then Vice-President JD Vance to press the peace deal. The two special US envoys who helped negotiate the ceasefire, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, also accompanied Vance.
Trump sent his top officials to cool tempers in Gaza, as he is keen to push talks for the second and more critical phase of the peace plan. This would involve setting up an interim government in the Palestinian territory, deployment of an international stabilisation force, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops – all very difficult to implement.
For its part, Israel wants Gaza to be demilitarised and Hamas to lay down its arms, something the hardline group is reluctant to do.
Were the peace deal to progress, at some point the two-state solution to the vexed problem is likely to surface, given that France, Canada, the United Kingdom and several other Western nations formally declared their recognition of a Palestinian state in September, to put pressure on the US and its ally Israel.
The deal presents a detailed roadmap for both Hamas and Israel to maintain the ceasefire and ultimately end the war
Soon after taking office, Trump invited international rebuke for suggesting that Gaza should be given to the US and that he would develop it like a French Riviera. The international community wanted a sustainable and practical solution to the Gaza conflict, not some pipedream.
Accordingly, post the latest flare-up in Gaza, Trump issued a stern warning to both sides and asked them not to sabotage the peace deal at any cost. The US believes that Hamas has become weaker, especially after America and Israel destroyed the nuclear capability of the militant group’s supporter Iran this year, and hence it should be easy to bring the hardliners to the negotiating table.
Although the US backs Israel fully, Washington knows it is important to keep its ally under control if peace is to be given a chance.
Besides dealing with pressure from Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also needs to deal with domestic woes. Recently, he was angered over the Knesset advancing two key bills for annexation of the occupied West Bank areas and saw it as an opposition ploy to dent his popularity,which has soared over the past two years.
Putin wants to keep the Ukrainian areas Russia has occupied
At another level, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has decided to press ahead with the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, despite the ceasefire deal.
China, which never loses a chance to challenge the US global hegemony, has welcomed the Gaza peace deal but also stressed that the area’s future belonged to the Palestinians, a hint towards the two-state solution which Israel will find hard to digest.
Following the Gaza peace pact, the Department of State is busy projecting Trump as the ‘president of peace who ended eight wars in eight months’ of his second term.
Whatever the truth – or otherwise – of this, another global hotspot, Ukraine, continues to test the US president’s nerves, as his efforts to end Russia’s war there have failed to bear fruit.
The Ukraine war started when Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022. According to UN estimates, the deadliest war in Europe since World War II has killed as many as 14,000 civilians so far and has blown billions of dollars of Western aid.
Trump, who had vowed to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office as president, has been trying hard to negotiate a peace deal between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelsnsky over the past months, but without much success.
In August this year, Trump and Putin met in Alaska to discuss the matter but weeks later Moscow resumed its attacks on Ukraine. A frustrated Trump then issued several warnings to Putin to push for a ceasefire. He even announced new sanctions on two Russian oil majors to put pressure on Moscow, but that move did not help either.
Instead, Russian attacks have now gone beyond military targets and include civilian infrastructure to bring Kyiv to its knees.Putin recently indulged in some nuclear sabre-rattling as Moscow tested its long-range missile that can dodge US missile defence systems, and said he planned to deploy the weapon. Trump responded by saying that a US nuclear submarine was located off Russia’s coast, and warned Putin to talk peace instead.
A second meeting between Trump and Putin, planned to take place in Budapest, Hungary, also looks unlikely, in light of certain ceasefire terms (freezing the war at the existing frontlines and discussing territorial claims later) proposed by the US president.
Putin wants to keep the Ukrainian areas Russia has occupied during the war and is keen that Kyiv should lay down arms, before Moscow agrees to any ceasefire. For Ukraine, which has shown extraordinary resilience against a mighty force over the past years, giving away land to the enemy sounds like suicide.
Against this backdrop, Trump, who hails himself as a global peace pusher, needs to find the middle ground, if any, in Ukraine. However, the tough posturing by both the US and Russian presidents does not augur well for peace in the Eurasian conflict.
Amit Agnihotri is a Delhi-based journalist who has worked with several national newspapers and focuses on politics and policy issues